Just hours after many stops on her international tour sold out, the pop star added more shows — including a second in Seattle. She will now play Oct. 2 and 3 — with tickets for Oct. 3 going on sale Feb. 21 through Ticketmaster.

It’s 88 years old, has a flair for architectural drama and once housed stenographers, phone switchboards, shoe shiners and telegraph workers. It’s the Seattle Chamber of Commerce building at Columbia …

Robots were dancing in Red Square at the University of Washington last week, part of a flash mob orchestrated in response to an 11-year-old boy’s wish.

Alex told the Make a Wish Foundation that he’d like to see robots working to help humanity and bring about world peace. What he got was a robot-themed dance performance — after a tour of the UW BioRobotics lab.

No joke — unless the New York Times is pulling our legs. The newspaper’s style division recently published an article about how ” flamboyantly colored, audaciously patterned socks” are becoming the must-have fashion accessory of California techies.

Not to be outdone by the folks in Silicon Valley, Seattle’s techies had better hurry to their sock suppliers of choice and stockpile crazy-loud socks as fast as they can. (We are, after all, No. 1.)

Today in our weekly now-and-then gallery we take a look back at the Madrona and Mann neighborhoods of Central Seattle. Some of the places in the photos are long gone: the Shell station at 25th Avenue …